lean on me

So now that The Ben has discovered his toes, he seems to be quickly falling out of favor with his fists. Although he still spends the majority of his waking hours stuffing one, three or five fingers into his relentlessly drooling mouth, you can now see his desire to replace those fingers with his feet. It was only a short time ago that he began pulling on his toes whilst mom or dad struggled instead to straighten his legs and get a fresh diaper under his bottom, but now you can begin to see the determination growing in his chubby little face, starting with a furrowed brow and pursed, drool-bubble lips, while he gradually pulls those delectable digits closer to his gums. Of course he hasn’t quite reached the nirvana that is suckling on your own wiggly big toe, but you can just sense it in the air that the journey will soon be over. It’s so much fun to watch him master these novel tricks and gain a new awareness for his surroundings employing what must be some newly developed part of his miniature brain, it makes you wonder why it ever has to slow down. I am so eager and excited to see the next trick of his and later I know I’ll be proud to say that I was around to witness it from the very beginning. This must be another one of those great moments you can never experience without raising a child of your own: like following your favorite local band from obscurity all the way to global superstrardom, only a parent can look at their adult Grammy Award-winning child and remember the first moment they laughed or uttered something resembling a word, well before all the fame and fanatical media glitz. We’re our child’s first fan, his first roadie, and completely non-sexual groupie. He’ll probably never know that these virgin riffs and practice sessions just might be equally as exciting as anything else he’ll ever perform, at least from his parent’s standpoint, and that much more exclusive.

I’ve recently read somewhere in some parenting book or other conspicuously left by my wife in one of my frequent paths of travel throughout the house [read: the bathroom] in order to subliminally educate me on the ways and means of better child-rearing, that babies at this stage are very ego-centric and rightfully so, as they haven’t yet developed the social skills required to master, for instance, concepts of sharing or empathy [did I get that right, parents?]. If I understand that correctly, then babies this age haven’t yet developed the ability to make their parents feel better after a long, shitty day, much like a good friend or family member might do with a shoulder to lean on or a bottle of beer. Well, I hate to prove those pesky authors wrong, but even if our babies aren’t fully cognizant of the effects their actions carry, they sure do have the natural ability to make our days so much brighter. Why else do babies smile but to make sure that their parents know they’re doing a good job and that, yeah, you might have to take me upstairs in a minute and clean the crap out from my hair but I do love you for it and, aw heck, you just do it so well I might ask you do it again, say 2:30 tomorrow morning? Follow that with a big grin, a spot of irresistible dimples, and all of a sudden, daddy feels like he’s actually worth something once in a while. If we let them, our babies can be the sturdiest shoulder to lean on or the deepest glass of beer with which to wash away our sorrows. And deep down, way way down, on some metaphysical level, I think they know it.